2023 The Ojai Vineyard Chardonnay Clima Frio Santa Barbara County 750 ml

The Ojai Vineyard's Chardonnay California is a touchstone for us—and judging by how widely the finest restaurants have embraced Adam Tolmach's wines, we're not alone. We've spied Ojai Chard on the lists at Le Bernardin, Eleven Madison Park, and the NoMad LA.

We're pretty sure we all love the wine for the same reason: Very few winemakers manage to make Chardonnay that's classically California in its richness and texture while preserving so much pinpoint precision and elegance. That makes Ojai an absolute rockstar in fine dining—but also delightful and thrilling to drink at home—and the 2023 Clima Frío Chardonnay captures their magic in an under-$50 bottle that Antonio Galloni called "fabulous."

We've sometimes heard The Ojai Vineyard's founder and winemaker Adam Tolmach compared to The Velvet Underground. He's a giant influence on your favorite winemaker—an absolute legend inside the wine industry—but somehow stays out of the spotlight. Adam is absolutely making his best wines right now, and they deserve your full attention. In his Vinous review, Galloni added "Adam Tolmach continues to turn out gorgeous wines that speak to the true reflection of place. The 2023 vintage plays to his strengths when it comes to the whites, which are some of the best I have tasted here in at least a few years." 

Blended from two cold sites on the western edge of Santa Barbara, this shows Adam's full touch in a vintage he described as "the stuff of winemaker's dreams." Fermented with a native-yeast pied de cuve and aged for nine months in older oak barrels, it's a display of the brilliant dialectic in his best bottles.